As part of a research programme to discover how Iron Age architects built their largest buildings, archaeologists in south-west Wales are recreating a 45ft wide (13.7m) roundhouse on the exact spot it stood 23 centuries ago. Designing the roof angle to minimise rainwater retention, they have worked out that the original structure must have stood 26ft (7.9m) high.
     The chieftain's house, at Castell Henllys in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park - will be among the largest reconstructed prehistoric buildings in Europe, and the only structure of its size in the UK built on its original site. The shallow foundations of the wattle and daub walls are even being built in the trench dug by the Iron Age architects in circa 300BCE.
     The roundhouse was almost certainly built, and is being rebuilt, entirely from timber uprights and roof beams, water reeds for the room thatch, young hazel branches for latticework walls (wattles) and clay, cow dung, straw and horsehair for daub to cover the wall latticework.
The building would have been home for a powerful local chieftain. It stood within and dominated a small village surrounded by multiple earthwork, stone and timber defences. Apart from the chief's stately pile, the settlement boasted up to a dozen smaller roundhouses, lived in by up to 150 relatives and retainers.
     The chieftain, who probably controlled a territory of some 30 square miles, is likely to have been a leading member of a tribal people later known as the Demetae (from which the modern regional name Dyfed is derived).
     Castell Henllys will reopen at Easter (10am-5pm daily)

Source: The Independent